[Commlist] CFP: Virtuous Viewing

Virtuous viewing

Over the past few months, numerous streaming services, media 
conglomerates, film critics and journals, as well as academic 
departments, have published lists of anti-racist films and television 
shows to watch, or promoted Black Lives Matter watchlists and viewing 
queues. This phenomenon has altered what it means to watch, particularly 
in a time of quarantine, when cinematic spectatorship in the US largely 
a small group and private affair. Likewise, by connecting spectatorship 
to a political position, these lists present watching as an explicitly 
politically-aware act. Watching films and television shows has always 
been political. But because many of these lists also make educative 
claims (to watch these films is to become informed), such lists assume 
viewers are well-intentioned but ignorant. Of course, the curation of 
moving images is not new and presents genuine opportunities for 
awareness, consciousness raising, and political change. And yet, these 
practices may also be cynical attempts to capitalize on a specific 
moment of work from home quarantine and political uprisings on the 
streets. Moreover, viewers themselves may attempt to signal their 
political awareness through social media posts and various other public 
markers in order to claim moral excellence.

This special issue of /Film Criticism/ seeks submissions on contemporary 
viewing practices and issues of spectatorship specifically related to 
the notion of *virtue*. Virtue has long been associated with moral 
excellence, including chastity, industry, honesty, courage as well as 
strength and power. The practice of virtuous viewing, then, is tied to 
demonstration of moral character and moral superiority. Open to a 
variety of methods and theoretical positions, this issue is looking for 
work that interrogates the creation of these lists and subsequent 
viewing practices. What are the implications of virtuous viewing for 
film and media studies? What historical contingencies have coalesced to 
make these practices possible? What are the potential effects of these 
practices? What kinds of spectatorship are available now, in a time 
marked by quarantine, political uprising, and structured by 
internet-based digital media technologies?

Topics may include, but certainly are not limited to:

  * Virtue as branding and marketing strategy
  * Virtuous curation
  * Virtue signaling through viewing practices
  * Woke watching
  * History months and themes
  * Media literacy and curation
  * Public libraries as virtuous and educative curators
  * “Cancel culture” as virtuous viewing’s negative form
  * Slacktivism
  * Religious spectatorship
  * Ethnographic and or personal accounts of partaking in virtuous
    viewing and or list making
  * Histories of issue-oriented viewing lists
  * Video sharing platform playlists and algorithmic suggestions

Please send 500-word proposals with short bio to Stephen Groening 
(groening /at/ uw.edu) <mailto:(groening /at/ uw.edu)>by November 1^st , 2020.



*STEPHEN GROENING*
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Washington

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